


To the City, Lost and Forsaken

by neuxue



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Gen, the worst roadtrip ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:07:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21934948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuxue/pseuds/neuxue
Summary: Lanfear and Asmodean's Great and Terrible Roadtrip: it's all fun and games until someone gets betrayed.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 47





	To the City, Lost and Forsaken

**Author's Note:**

> A WoT Secret Santa gift for @liancrescent - you requested Forsaken, and Asmodean was happy to oblige

### I. A nightmare dressed like an even worse nightmare, if you know what to look for

She came to him in _Tel’aran’rhiod_ , and Asmodean knew better than to ask if it was because she feared to face him in the waking world.

‘I know where he is going. You will come with me.’

‘You do not command me, Mierin,’ he shot back, wishing he had his harp with which to underscore his words. Certainly not to hide behind, of course. He was not afraid of Lanfear. Cautious, perhaps, but that was only sensible.

He saw the flash of anger, quickly hidden, that crossed her face at the mention of her name. That she bothered to hide it at all spoke volumes; Lanfear was never one to hold her temper, unless she truly needed something.

‘Very well. I know where he is going, and I invite you to come with me. As if you could ever find him on your own. You should be thanking me for the opportunity. Together we will take him before he begins to learn his power, and reap the rewards.’

Asmodean narrowed his eyes, knowing her words for lies but seeking the truth behind them. It was a trick one had to learn, if one wanted to survive Lanfear long.

He was not arrogant enough, certainly not foolish enough, to think she had chosen him for strength. Rahvin and Demandred overmatched him; even Semirhage might be stronger than he, though surely Lanfear would never consider her as an ally. None considered Semirhage an ally, not if they wished to live. Demandred, then, but Demandred despised Lews Therin, and that hatred had been transferred whole and unrelenting to the shepherd Rand al’Thor, and Lanfear, Asmodean was certain, did not want him dead, whatever the Great Lord had asked. He was not even entirely sure she wanted him taken; not for the Great Lord. No, she wanted him for herself.

Which meant she could not choose Demandred or Sammael; Be’lal and Aginor and Balthamel were dead, and it seemed more and more certain that Ishamael had truly fallen. That thought made his fingers itch for harp strings again. How could a shepherd have destroyed the strongest of them? What hope was there, when the Betrayer of Hope himself had fallen? It was not cowardice to admit fear in the face of that, surely.

‘What do you want, Mierin?’ he asked flatly, as much to divert his own thoughts as to hear her answer.

‘What is mine,’ she snapped, discordant and abrupt, before smoothing her voice once more into the tune she had been singing. ‘What I have been promised. What _we_ have been promised. Think of the glory that awaits the o — those who take the Dragon Reborn, where so many already have failed. You and I—’

She continued, but Asmodean had stopped listening, mind working furiously, hands clenched into fists at his sides to keep from reaching for — no, this was _Tel’aran’rhiod_ , and he had as much right to work it as she. A harp appeared in his hands and he broke chords into arpeggios as he tried to pluck the true meaning from her words.

She truly did not want him dead, if she spoke so carefully of _taking_. Of what was hers.

That left Rahvin or himself among the men, but why had she not chosen one of the women? Semirhage would be suicide, and Graendal perhaps no better, but Mesaana or Moghedien should have been easily cowed, if Lanfear wanted a lackey. Jealousy, perhaps? She had always been irrational in her desire to possess Lews Therin. But then, neither Mesaana nor Moghedien had ever showed a strong interest of any kind in him.

Why not one of them? And, more crucially, why ally with anyone at all? Lanfear — even when she was still called Mierin — had never shared power easily, scorning the others for their petty interests and grudges. As if hers were any less so.

Yet she had ignored his pointed use of her true name, had ignored his manipulation of _Tel’aran’rhiod_ in front of her, had ignored his own ignoring of her in favour of his music.

 _Take him before he beings to learn his power_.

No, she did not want him killed.

She wanted him taken, perhaps wanted him turned. And for that…

His fingers stilled on the harp strings, and he let the instrument vanish.

She wanted him _taught_.

And for that, she truly did need him. For that, there was no other choice. He had no intention of teaching the Dragon Reborn, but in her need was a modicum of protection. He could use that, use her, to find this Rand al’Thor, to get close to him without her suspecting; she always was blind to the movements of pieces she thought she controlled. And the others would think twice before striking at two of them allied.

Unless the others allied as well. Unless Lanfear changed her mind. Unless this Rand al’Thor already knew more than she thought. But if he refused her…

He almost laughed with the bitterness of it: a thousand paths to death on either side, and just one to survival, and that anything but certain.

‘Where is he, then?’ Asmodean asked, testing.

‘You will learn that soon enough, when you agree to come with me.’

‘No. You will tell me now, or I will go nowhere with you.’ It cost him nothing to meet her eyes. If his palms dampened and his heart turned over, it was unrelated. She needed him; he had no reason to be afraid of her.

‘Rhuidean,’ she said finally, the word thrown like a knife, and it was all he could do not to flinch from the venom in her voice. ‘He is going to Rhuidean, in what is now called the Aiel Waste.’

Now that was unexpected. And interesting, and full of opportunities he had not considered.

‘I shall think on it,’ he said. ‘You will have my answer tomorrow.’

And with that he stepped from the dream, leaving her protests half-formed in his wake.

### II. 3000 years is a long time when you can’t update any of your playlists

It was a simple thing that decided him, in the end, and whatever Lanfear thought, it was neither her threats nor her lies. It certainly wasn’t acquiescence to the plan she thought she had so cleverly hidden. It was music.

Ishamael had told him something of this world in which he — and the others — had awakened, some brief history of the last three millennia. Enough to understand something of the politics, not to mention the language, of the time. Enough to start planning, to start gathering power.

But what Ishamael had failed to give him was so much as a single note of a song written in the last three thousand years. Doubtless most of it was primitive, single-voice dross, hardly comparable to his own Age’s great symphonies, but his disguise would only hold so long if he could not play a single tune known to those now living.

Painstakingly, he had begun to gather some: a folk song here, a tavern jig there, bits and pieces of older melodies half-remembered at best to most, yet long after his time. It…galled him, that centuries of music had passed him by; that had been his promise, after all, had it not? Yet he had spent those years, all those years, in silence. And awakened to a world that had all but forgotten true music.

Well, he would remedy that. He would bring to them music that would make their souls weep, even if all he had was a harp and a wooden flute. But first, he needed their songs.

The Aiel had always been the greatest of singers. If any would know the songs of this Age, the songs that had risen and crescendoed and fallen silent, all while he was trapped in darkness, it would be they.

‘I will go,’ he said, and Lanfear smiled, but it was too late to change course now.

### III. It's not homicide if it's a public service

He was going to strangle Lanfear with a harp string. Surely the Great Lord would not object, and likely the others would only thank him.

First, she had broken his favourite harp — well, no. _First_ , she had arranged for this infernal caravan to begin with. They had to be inconspicuous, she had said, and that meant entering this Waste like primitives, and keeping pace with carts that seemed hardly to move at all, through a land that baked during the day and froze at night; no weather to keep fine instruments in. How did she expect him to play the gleeman in such conditions, when harps in this Age were made merely of wood, without the One Power woven into their crafting, to keep them from warping, to keep the strings in tune?

That, too, had been Lanfear’s idea. Never mind that he had disguised himself as a gleeman before. She did not even ask before introducing him as ‘Master Jasin Natael, a gleeman as you can see’. She had not even waited for him to give the name he had chosen, all the while flashing signs with her hands that identified her as a Friend of the Dark of the highest possible rank.

Of course, he had corrected that small matter himself, making his own signs as soon as he had Kadere alone. He could not change his name, not without arousing suspicion, but he could at least make sure he was accorded the proper respect. He would not have them answering to Lanfear alone.

He spun a gateway when she found out what he had done, returning only the following day, when her rage had cooled, only to receive a tongue-lashing for such a display of the Power and his unexplained absence.

Very well; he would stay with the wagons. So he had seated himself in hers, and removed his harp from its case, and set about playing from sunup to sundown all the songs he knew she hated most.

She had no call to snap his harp strings like that.

And now… ‘You did not think to inform me of what the _Da’shain_ had become?’

‘I assumed you knew,’ she answered smoothly, but he knew her cadences well, and there had been just an instant of hesitation. Had she not known any more than he had? No, she had been in Tear; she would have learned it there, if not sooner.

‘You could have destroyed us both,’ he shot back. He could still see the shock, and confusion, and something like suspicion on the faces of the Aiel when he had asked them to share their songs. _But you are greater singers than any gleeman_ , he had said, trusting to flattery. _I would be honoured to hear the Aiel sing_. Recovering that had been…difficult.

Lanfear simply laughed. ‘You cannot tell me you fear these savages? Even you are not so cowardly as that.’

 _You should fear them more_ , he thought but did not say. The Da’shain had always had greater strength, greater depths, than most had ever credited them with, even in his time. And now that strength had been brought to the surface and honed to sharpness. He had seen what their songs could do. If that same force were brought to bear behind their spears, given direction…

And the songs? Who held the songs, now, that the Da’shain had once so treasured? Or had they truly been lost, carried away on the winds of time? He found himself unthinkingly playing the opening bars of a requiem, one of the last pieces composed in the ending of an Age, one of the last he had heard before the long silence.

He stilled the strings as Lanfear’s face twisted in anger; he did not want to find another harp.

‘You will tell me what you know of them,’ he said, ‘or their women will learn who walks their dreams.’

### IV. The lost art of magical sleeve tattoos

This Couladin had approached him — it was still a shock, to hear a _Da’shain_ requesting a song instead of singing it — and it had not been difficult to discern the source of his fury. An enmity that presented an opportunity.

That night, when he was certain Lanfear’s attentions were elsewhere, on other dreams, he pulled Couladin into _Tel’aran’rhiod_. He had never been strong in the World of Dreams, but this much he could do.

Around them both he held the blurred image of a city shrouded in fog and littered with objects of the Power. He had not been able to penetrate Rhuidean’s shields in the dream, and he had not dared try to Travel into it waking — not yet, not with Lanfear watching — but he had seen enough to guess, and Couladin had never set foot there either, and should not know the difference.

He knew he was right when he saw Couladin’s eyes widen as he took in his surroundings before returning to meet his own.

‘Who are you?’ the Aiel asked, the command in his voice fading into wonder. ‘What is this place? Am I dreaming?’

‘This is no ordinary dream,’ Asmodean told him.

‘But…’ Couladin frowned in confusion. ‘You are not a Wise One, to walk my dreams. What is this?’

Asmodean almost laughed; these primitives’ ignorance of _Tel’aran’rhiod_ suited his purposes perfectly. Oh, they knew of its existence, in a manner of speaking, but they believed it the sole domain of their Wise Ones. They prided themselves, even, on their knowledge of something the so-called Wetlanders were even more ignorant of, yet never considered that men could learn to master the dream as well.

‘I am no Wise One,’ Asmodean acknowledged solemnly. ‘I am an emissary of Rhuidean. Look around you. They tried to refuse you, but you have been chosen. You are the true _Car’a’carn_ , to lead the Aiel to glory in battle.’

The last was added purely for his own amusement, and he still could hardly credit the look of hunger and ambition that filled Couladin’s face. That the Aiel could have changed so much…

Well. If they could not give him songs, at least they would give him chaos. A cover against Lanfear, and an opening to carry out his own plans. She was not the only one who could use people.

‘Rand al’Thor—’

‘Is a creation of Aes Sedai,’ Asmodean invented smoothly, weaving the explanation like a harmony to the melody of his intent as he reached out to grasp Couladin’s arms. ‘You know he travels with Aes Sedai, you know he can wield the Power himself. With that, he stole the secrets of Rhuidean, and mocked its markings.’

The hatred in Couladin’s eyes could almost have matched Demandred’s. Asmodean himself had been surprised to find he held no enmity for the boy — might have liked him, even, could he forget even for a moment that it was Lews Therin who had trapped him in millennia of silence.

But while Lanfear might still call him Lews Therin, there was little of the Dragon to him, unless it was his unfathomable but unshakeable sense of duty. In all else, he truly was a shepherd, untutored not just in the Power but in the ways of war or politics, seemingly learning himself through trial and desperation.

Well, now he would have a mortal enemy to try himself against. _A gift to you_ , Asmodean thought, as he released Couladin’s now-glittering forearms, and vanished from the dream.

### V. Plan for the worst, and even then your surprises will manage to be unpleasant

All his planning, all his carefully laid distractions, an entire Aiel army set on a course of destruction and the others ready to destroy themselves, and it had come to this.

How could he have been outplayed by Lanfear? Lanfear, who needed him. Lanfear, who never looked further than her own obsession.

Unless…unless it had not been only Lanfear. He looked again to the shepherd who had nearly destroyed him — who _had_ destroyed him; cutting his link to the Great Lord was as sure a death sentences as balefire; the only difference was time.

Lanfear had walked his dreams, and if Asmodean had persuaded Couladin, perhaps she had persuaded Rand al’Thor. He should have known she would find a way, should have known better than to trust in her need for him. Should have known better than to believe this boy naïve, this boy who had once been Telamon.

But the anticipation of betrayal did not make the reality any less bitter, did not make the sentence any less final. Immortality was gone. But perhaps it had been lost long ago, with the songs he would never now hear. And so he did the only thing left to him.

He knelt in the dust of ruined ruins and begged.


End file.
